Tilting at windmills and herding rhinos

Why does government seem to have only two ways of dealing with things — shoving overly complicated regulations down our throats or throwing taxpayer money at supposed problems that aren’t real?

We’re witnessing a classic example of the regulation response in how Marion County is dealing with wind farms.

It’s clear that a fair number of people — especially die-hards who appear at every meeting of county commissioners — don’t want wind turbines, especially in their backyards.

They complain, with some justification, that what the county negotiated as payments in lieu of taxes weren’t as generous as they could have been.

But that’s somewhat like me complaining about the price I received in the ’70s when selling a 1964½ Ford Mustang, which now would be worth eight times what I originally paid for it.

Or me complaining about trading a No. 1 Spider-Man comic when I was 9 years old for some generic comic I hadn’t read.

Or the price I received for selling my home in a rural area of oddly named Pewaukee, Wisconsin, a couple of years before a ritzy subdivision, including one in which NFL stars J.J. and T.J. Watt have houses, grew up around it.

I also didn’t buy shares in Google when I was offered them at a time when all anyone knew in the way of search engines was Alta Vista.

Yes, I made mistakes. But I have to move on. There’s no need for me to propose complicated regulations on selling classic cars or classic comics or predicting real estate and stock trends.

It’s not as if the county is getting nothing from its two wind farms. They are the single largest “taxpayers” in the county, and they willingly contribute to a variety of local causes — including food that one particularly strident wind-farm foe picked up the other day at the local food bank.

Still, the group of entrenched wind farm foes believe they must drag the county through hour upon hour of complicated proposed regulations for wind farm expansion — rules that, for the most part, would preclude any meaningful growth of existing wind farms or creation of new ones.

There’s a much simpler answer, and it’s even been suggested by a consultant hired by planning and zoning officials whom the wind farm foes constantly revile.

All Marion County has to do is say, hey, we’ve supported alternative energy. We’ve allowed two separate wind farms in our county. We’ve done our duty. Now it’s time for some other county to step forward. We’ve done enough. Zoning allows statements like that, just like it allows communities to say they don’t want more than a certain number of liquor stores or beer joints.

Put a statement like that in the county’s comprehensive plan, and the whole wind farm issue goes away. It won’t, of course. Many of the foes are so doggedly opposed that they will continue to drag planning and zoning officials and wind farm operators through the mud for whatever bogus reason they can come up with until cranes and bulldozers come in and remove all the turbines.

That won’t happen, of course. No court is going to order it. No group of county commissioners can require it. No wind farm operator will allow it. And for good reason: The cost — and potential environmental damage — would be extreme.

So, let’s face facts. We have two wind farms. We’re going to continue to have two wind farms. We don’t need to allow anymore. Maybe we can turn our attention to things we actually can change, like the state of county roads or the bloating of expenses in various county departments.

The solution of throwing money at non-problems came up Tuesday night at a Marion City Council meeting. This editorial was written before the meeting, so hopefully elected officials made some of the points I’m about to make.

A proposal to have the city buy dozens of rhino statues and position them in front of every enterprise in town is a classic throw-money-at-a-non-problem solution. We’ve had a rhino at our office for 20 years. We’ve had a lot of people travel to Marion to visit us, but not a soul has come to Marion to check out our rhino. Why would they? Originally, the rhinos were to promote Chingawassa Days. And originally, businesses and others paid for their rhinos. Now the city wants to pay for rhinos instead of the businesses.

The first 25 rhinos came in 2005 and were followed by a larger number the next year. Many of the places where city-purchased rhinos are proposed to be placed actually had their own, which they purchased without city help, but over the years have vanished. At least a couple were stolen, but we imagine a great number were either trashed or moved to some storeroom.

The Chamber of Commerce, back when it existed, had fun running contests to decorate the rhinos. Our current mayor won one of the first of those.

But it wasn’t a contest designed to foster economic development. It was just a fun thing to do. Why the city now should invest taxpayer money in something that has had lagging buy-in and no real impact on the economy over the past 20 years is self-absorbed.

But that’s the way many government actions are these days. The fact that this week’s council meeting had to be moved from Monday to Tuesday so council members could attend a presumably more important school event is further evidence of that.

Poet Ogden Nash got it right when he wrote:

The rhino is a homely beast.

For human eyes he’s not a feast.

Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros.

I’ll stare at something less prepoceros.

His play on the word “preposterous” was apropos. There’s no earthly reason why Marion should use taxpayer money — either directly or from government grants — to expand its herd of concrete rhinos, especially at a time when it could be facing millions in liability that won’t be covered by insurance.

When your roof leaks, it’s not time to buy a new 95-inch TV and claim it’s for economic development because of the people you can invite over to watch Chiefs games. It’s time to cut costs and start saving up for roof repairs.

— ERIC MEYER